


A Million Pieces

by Afflitto



Series: Greater than the Sum [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afflitto/pseuds/Afflitto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short companion (prequel?) oneshot to Greater than the Sum.  Dennor.</p><p>"Four months of caring for Mathias and Lukas had given up hope that anything would change.  He lay there, chest falling and rising as if he were asleep, but eyes did not move beneath his lids and muscles wasted away."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to my beta about a full length prequel with the Dennor, that's her job! I'm working on the sequel, which is mostly Gerita and USUK. Written for Dennor Week, prompt "Loss".

_–He’d run into the hall of mirrors just as Mathias had been dragged before the king._

_“Run, Lukas—you damn fool—I’ll catch up—get to the ship—“ Mathias had been thrown into the ground so hard that his eyes rolled into the back of his head.  Still, he coughed heavily and struggled upright._

_That’s when the boy with the blindfold had been thrust forward and the cloth ripped from his eyes—_

_And all that was truly Mathias was shattered into a million pieces._

* * *

Each lurch of the boat was like a missed step. Lukas clung to the table, his stomach heaving just as violently, and screwed his eyes shut.

He could hear children’s laughter.  Mocking in its innocence.  The boat swayed with fresh foot falls.  Shadows glanced through shutters that sliced sunlight into broken slats across the floor.

He clutched tighter.  A throbbing pulsed from his temple to the back of his head. It settled into the hard pit in his chest and made time with a heart made erratic.  He felt too full.  He felt too empty.  He’d puke if he had anything in him.

When he opened his eyes, even the darkness of the kitchen bore into him, but slowly he shuffled along til he could gulp down the rest of stale coffee.  Tilting his head back, he pinched the bridge of his nose until he could think again.

This was not the ship Mathias had commanded—the massive airship with fluttering sails and canons and railing, metal and gleaming, enormous.  This was a small houseboat anchored by a rope to the side of a cliff, bobbing up and down with the air currents, one of many tethered there.  Slowly he shuffled out onto deck, one hand shielding his eyes, and squinted down into the impossible chasm below.  

One child went careening off the side of his boat, but grabbed the figurehead and swung himself onto the next.  Lukas braced himself as his boat pitched with the jolt of weight.  A mother who had been hanging laundry from a line strung between her boat and another scolded him.

Little more than a faint hum against the buzzing in Lukas’s skull, it all felt impossibly distant.  Even the breeze rustling through the fleet was a leeching touch, and the sun was scathing and cold.

But upwards, in sharp focus, Lukas grit his teeth and stared at the cascade of islands hanging overhead, hunks of rocks arranged like a spiral chandelier, each hundreds of feet higher than the next. Occasionally water would gush the periphery of one then plummet down onto where it overlapped the edge of the next, and so on.

The man who would call himself king, hidden away behind golden walls beyond a hall of mirrors on the third of four tiers. That was the man who destroyed his life. Destroyed Mathias.

And somehow, despite the anger and the flashes of memory—of Mathias’s eager eyes and the glimmer of his ax just moments before those mirrors shattered and his lover fell—all Lukas could feel was exhaustion.

He did not realize he’d shuffled back inside. Somehow the memory became too much, and he was prone to fading in and out.  As if in a trance, his hand wrapped around the handle to the room in the back, but he hesitated, knuckles turning white.  He twisted it and wandered in.

Four months of caring for Mathias and he’d given up hope that anything would change.  He lay there, chest falling and rising as if he were asleep, but eyes did not move beneath his lids and muscles wasted away.  Automatically, Lukas rested a hand on his forehead.  Too cold, even beneath a sheen of sweat.  Still, he brushed Mathias's hair from his eyes and spooned the rest of cold soup into Mathias’s mouth, lifting his head into his lap. Some dribbled down his chin.

 He left it on the bedside table beside a pile of others, stacked high and dirty, and tugged open the shutters in the back of the boat.  Mathias had always liked the sunlight.

 Lukas swallowed past the lump in his throat, shaking his head as he pressed fingertips into closed eyes and inhaled deeply. Then, turning, he caught his reflection in the ax still propped in the corner of the tiny room, which was devoid of furniture other than the bed.

 He looked pale.  Skinny.  Dark circles cut deep beneath dull eyes, almost as sharp as wasted cheekbones. His hair was dry and jagged.

 He turned away, back to Mathias.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice hoarse and somehow alien.  “I’ll fix you.  I’ll fix you somehow.  I’ll learn how.  I’m sorry…” Then he took his place beside the bed, down on the floor where he’d wadded up some blankets for a pillow, and curled into himself there.  “You idiot. Don’t you know this hurts.”


End file.
